While affiliate marketing makes it possible to earn passive income, many people are drawn in by the affiliate marketing myths and facts surrounding this business model. “There is a grain of truth in every joke” is a famous saying you can apply to affiliate marketing myths and facts.
There are a few affiliate marketing myths and facts that we've all heard before. Affiliate marketing is dead, and it's all about passive revenue, questionable business, and many more.
To help you concentrate on what matters and making money through affiliate marketing, we're here to debunk some of these widespread misunderstandings about affiliate marketing myths and facts.
As you already know, affiliate marketing is one of the best models to make money online. The most successful affiliate marketers earn a good amount of money from it. But it’s only an exceptional case.
SOME FACTS ON AFFILIATE MARKETING:
- 15% of the total digital media advertising revenue is attributed to affiliate marketing.
- Affiliate programs generate 15%–30% of all sales for advertisers.
- More than 50% of affiliate-referred traffic comes from mobile devices.
- Annual affiliate marketing spending is around an estimated US$12 billion
- Driving conversions and increasing purchases are the two primary goals for 79% of marketers.
Affiliate Marketing is a promotional process of selling affiliate products to the right audience with pre-planned marketing strategies. It is about sharing links with the audience and delivering good values to the right audience to get high conversion.
Most newbies think affiliate marketing is about joining lots of affiliate programs and sharing affiliate links with others. They don’t realize that these perceptions are unrealistic and severe, which can ruin their affiliate careers.
In this in-depth affiliate marketing myths and facts guide, we will share the top affiliate marketing myths and facts you should know to become a genuinely professional Affiliate Marketer.
What are Affiliate Marketing Dos?
Well, great question. Here are some Dos for Affiliate Marketing:
- Choose quality products: Be sure to choose products that align with your audience's interests and needs. Don't just promote anything for the sake of making money.
- Build trust with your audience: Provide honest and valuable information about the products you promote. Avoid misleading claims or exaggerations.
- Use multiple marketing channels: Utilize various platforms and channels to reach a wider audience. This could include social media, email marketing, influencer marketing, and more.
- Disclose affiliate relationships: Be transparent with your audience and disclose your affiliate relationships. This builds trust and credibility with your audience.
- Test and optimize: Continuously test and optimize your marketing strategies to improve performance and maximize results.
- Provide value-added content: Offer additional value to your audience through informative blog posts, videos, tutorials, and other types of content. This can increase engagement and boost sales.
- Stay up-to-date with industry trends: Keep yourself informed about new products, changes in consumer behavior, and emerging market trends. This helps you stay relevant and competitive in your niche.
What is Affiliate Marketing Donts?
Here are some common “don'ts” in affiliate marketing that you should be aware of:
- Don't promote products solely for the commission: Your audience will quickly notice if you only promote products to earn a commission. This can harm your credibility and reputation.
- Don't deceive your audience: Being transparent about your relationships with the products or brands you're promoting is essential. Don't try to trick them by hiding your affiliations or making false claims about the products.
- Don't spam your audience: Bombarding your audience with too many promotional messages can be annoying and counterproductive. Space out your promotions and ensure they're relevant and valuable to your audience.
- Don't ignore the product quality: Promoting low-quality products can damage your reputation and ultimately hurt your business. Ensure you only promote products you believe in and have tested yourself.
- Don't violate the terms of service: Every affiliate program has its own set of rules and regulations. Violating these terms can result in terminating your account or other penalties. So, make sure you read and understand the terms of each affiliate program you join.
Top Affiliate Marketing Myths and Facts and the Truth Behind Them
It would be best to clarify several myths regarding affiliate marketing before you can earn money.
It’s Easier to Get Started
If you think affiliate marketing is easy to make money online, you are definitely on the wrong track.
You would be surprised to know that only 6% of affiliate marketers make income from affiliate marketing, and the rest, 94% fail for some reason.
Affiliate Marketing Myths and Facts
Most newbies think of affiliate marketing as just a simple technique where they can start making money only by joining any affiliate program and sharing affiliate links with others through social media or any other channel. But this perception is wrong.
If you want long-term success in the affiliate business, there are many strategies you need to follow before you begin your affiliate journey.
Affiliate marketing isn’t just about sharing affiliate links; it’s about promoting your affiliate products to the target audience by providing great value.
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If you want to make your affiliate journey more comfortable, here are a few things to follow:
- First, you must identify a profitable niche in which you are interested.
- Set up your affiliate marketing website. But ensure your website is fully optimized for SEO purposes.
- Join reputable and popular affiliate marketing programs to promote affiliate products relevant to your niche.
- Now is the time to research your market to understand your target audience and what they want to buy. For this, you need to focus on keyword research and competitor research.
- According to research data, write SEO-optimized content for your affiliate products and niche. But ensure that your primary focus is on providing your audience with some great values.
Skill is not Necessary
Yet another common affiliate marketing myth is that it doesn’t require much skill. Program managers put a page on their website where affiliates can sign up, affiliates put some links in their content, and everyone makes lots of money. It doesn’t work this way.
It takes skill to sign-up and engages the right affiliates. It takes a lot of talent for affiliates to build relationships with their audience and influence decision-making. Many skills come together in digital marketing to build influence and expand reach; people don’t just get lucky.
40% of online marketers see affiliate marketing as a crucial skill. Beginners don’t start affiliate marketing and make thousands of dollars of sales from day one; it takes skill, effort, and perseverance.
It’s a Get Rich Quick Scheme
It is one of the biggest myths of all. Indeed, if you do everything carefully, you may earn a good living through affiliate marketing. But keep one thing in mind: patience is required since it takes time.
Most newbie affiliates think of affiliate marketing as an overnight success program where they expect to start making money the next day. It sounds good, but the fact is the opposite.
Affiliate marketing isn’t a get-rich-quick scheme where you start today, and from the next day or month, you will start making money.
Affiliate Marketing Myths and Facts
You will agree that many successful affiliate marketers are steadily making thousands of dollars, or even millions, only through affiliate marketing. But did you know that not all of them achieved this success overnight?
Yes, they have brilliant techniques and technical skills, like content writing, SEO optimization, website optimization, branding, promotion, etc. But the main point is that they have learned all these skills through long-term experiences.
So never think that affiliate marketing is a get-rich-quick scheme. Indeed, if you have the experience, you can expect good results quickly; if not, you need to learn all the affiliate marketing strategies and techniques with a lot of patience.
Popular Niche is Only the Better Option
The list of profitable niches is too long, but the most popular niches are Travel, Games and Sports, Yoga, Home Decor, Health & Fitness, Supplements, Weight Loss, Automotive, Baby Products, and so on.
We agree that choosing a popular niche for your affiliate marketing can give you great returns, but this is only the case.
Indeed, there is huge earning potential with popular niches due to extreme demands. But on the other hand, the competition level in these niches is also extremely high, as thousands of affiliate marketers are already there.
Because of high profitability, most newbies believe that popular niches are the only option for generating income through affiliate marketing. As a result, most of them fail to earn even a single penny and later give up all their efforts.
So initially, if you are a beginner and want to earn a decent amount, always start with a niche you are passionate about and a low level of competition.
As we said before if you are experienced and have excellent affiliate marketing skills, expanding your affiliate marketing business with popular niches will be easy.
More Products Lead to More Earnings
As an affiliate marketer, if you are familiar with your affiliate products, you can explain them well to your audience and expect some good sales figures.
No matter how many products you promote, the main point here is that you must have some personal experiences with all of those products.
Unfortunately, some think they can generate more revenue by promoting affiliate products. It can work to a certain extent, but if you believe you can boost your affiliate income without delivering the values to your audience, you are definitely on the wrong track.
Seriously, this approach doesn’t work anymore, and you are wasting your time and effort on promoting those unknown products you are not familiar with personally.
As a result, it is preferable to promote only affiliate products with which you have personal experience. You can easily convince your audience and generate a good income if you do so.
You Need a Blog or Website
Most people think a website or blog is necessary to start an affiliate marketing business. As an affiliate marketer, if you have an affiliate website or blog, that is awesome, but if you think it’s mandatory for successful affiliate marketing, then you are entirely wrong.
We agree that a website or blog can engage your audience with your content and promote your affiliate products. However, other effective methods are available where you don’t need a website or blog.
Here are some effective methods that you can use to promote your affiliate products.
1. Social Media Networks – You can promote your affiliate products to your audience using social media like Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, Twitter, Linkedin, and more.
2. Paid Ads – You can promote your affiliate products using paid ads on social media networks or Google searches. But remember one thing: create landing pages for your affiliate products to collect sales leads.
3. Email Marketing – Email marketing can promote your affiliate products.
4. Sales Funnel & Landing Pages – Using sales funnels and landing pages, you can promote affiliate products. You can use services like LeadPages, ClickFunnels, and InstaPages to create professional-looking pages.
Customer Hate Buying Through an Affiliate
In the past, most people were reluctant to buy anything from an affiliate link because they believed it could cost them extra money. But the times have changed, and online marketers are becoming more aware of affiliate marketing.
The Federal Trade Commission (FDI), an independent agency of the US government, mandated that all affiliate marketers include an affiliate disclosure page on all their affiliate websites, blogs, or landing pages to safeguard online buyers and increase transparency.
An affiliate disclosure is simply a brief written statement in which all affiliate marketers must declare they promote affiliate products and use affiliate links on their site. They should also mention that it won’t cost the buyer more if someone buys something through their affiliate link.
In the affiliate marketing industry, if you provide valuable content to your audience with complete transparency, you can expect good affiliate revenue through your affiliate links.
So, don’t believe this mythology that people hate buying through an affiliate.
Affiliate Marketing is Only for Professionals
Most people believe in the myth that affiliate marketing is only for professionals who need to have a particular qualification to start a profitable affiliate marketing business, but that’s not true.
Whether you’re a student, homemaker, or even from any profession, you can start anytime if you want to work with affiliate marketing.
Affiliate Marketing is open to everyone. You can apply to participate in almost any affiliate program; there is no specific requirement to join. Simultaneously, there are some reputable affiliate programs where you have to comply with some particular conditions.
Some of the specific requirements are:
- You must have a website, blog, application, or active social media account to promote the affiliate products.
- You should have decent traffic to your blog or website.
However anyone can start an affiliate marketing business, but you must have some essential sales and marketing skills and technical knowledge to succeed. It will help you earn a good affiliate income.
More Traffic Leads to More Sales
If you are getting a lot of traffic to your website, you are doing a great job. But remember that it doesn’t mean every visitor to your website will convert to a sale. Sure, your sales would increase, but that’s only the case.
There is a slight difference between traffic and targeted traffic. As an affiliate, your target audience is those who are looking for the product you are promoting and are in buying mode.
If you are getting massive traffic to your website, most visitors may be for informational purposes only; in that case, your affiliate sales might not increase.
You might have hundreds of visitors to your website daily, but traffic won't convert into sales without the proper placement of tools and links. To succeed, avoid these affiliate marketing mistakes:
- Lengthy page loading time: 50% of people abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load. Users quit the site before seeing any content.
- Overloaded site design: The blog must be simple and engaging to help users focus on the content.
- Non-engaging content: You must create high-quality, valuable content and organically integrate links to the products or services that you are promoting. If the content is not helpful and overloaded with affiliate links, it will not convert.
- Lack of keywords: Does your content contain long-tail and short-tail keywords that help search engines match your website to relevant queries?
How important are these factors for making a blog successful?
(Scale of 0-10)
In other words, it doesn’t matter how much traffic you get to your website, but if you don’t get targeted traffic, your sales figures won’t increase as you expected.
So, don’t just waste your time on increasing your website traffic. To increase your affiliate sales figure, focus on the website content’s quality and get target traffic.
Affiliate Marketing is all About Luck
Affiliate marketing is an online revenue model where you can grow your affiliate business and generate unlimited passive income if you have the potential. However, as an affiliate marketer, you need fundamental technical knowledge and skills regarding marketing, content creation, SEO, social media, paid ads, etc.
There are a lot of people who generate thousands of dollars per month from affiliate marketing. But we don’t know why some people believe that affiliate marketing is about luck.
Affiliate marketing isn’t just about sharing affiliate links; it’s about promoting your affiliate products to the right audience, delivering great values, and building trust.
If you fail to do all these things, you cannot survive in the affiliate marketing industry. So if you want to generate an affiliate income, don’t believe in luck; focus on your job.
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High Commission Means More Revenue
The higher the commission, the more revenue you will earn. Is it true, though? Generally, subscription-based products, for example, software, plugins, themes, and electronic products, offer a high commission rate.
But these products aren’t things that people will repeatedly buy. Software, ebooks, plugins, and theme stuff are even less likely to be sold too often. While it’s great that this category of products offers very high revenue compared to others, and some even provide recurring revenue, it’s a bit harder to pursue people to buy them. Unless you make a sale, you won’t earn revenue. So “higher commission, more revenue” is partially among the affiliate marketing myths.
We are not saying that you can’t make money promoting these products. But a higher-paying affiliate product also requires better marketing efforts and skills to maximize the affiliate marketing commissions.
High-commission products don’t necessarily mean you’ll earn significant affiliate revenue. The affiliate revenue you’ll receive will depend on how good you are at promoting something.
Affiliate Marketing is not Worth Starting Nowadays
It is one of the biggest affiliate marketing myths of all. Some think that affiliate marketing is not worth starting in today's hustle.
For a better understanding, you need to know these statistics. According to SaaS Scout, the global affiliate marketing industry is estimated to be worth $12 billion, and we expect it to grow by 10% in the next few years.
We think now you can easily imagine the future of affiliate marketing. So if you are thinking of diving into the affiliate marketing industry, trust us; it is not too late. It is still the best time to start your career as an affiliate marketer.
Final Words on Affiliate Marketing Myths and Facts
Affiliate marketing can make you decent money, and that is a fact. But if you understand how it works, i.e., earning you a commission from the sales of a product or a subscription which can usually be a percentage. We don’t know what you’d have to sell to make millions off it.
Of course, there are ways to increase your affiliate marketing revenue, including:
- Actively promoting your affiliate links to your audience.
- Signing up for several affiliate programs that pay decent commissions.
- Matching the brand you’re affiliated with to what your audience needs.
But none of them will make you an overnight millionaire. We hope we’ve clarified that once and for all. So, once again, here are the affiliate marketing myths that can derail your success. These are the affiliate marketing tips and tricks and affiliate marketing myths and facts you need to keep in mind instead:
As we said earlier, to be successful in affiliate marketing, you must develop your technical skills. No one can survive in the affiliate marketing industry just by sharing affiliate links with the audience. Now is the time to hone your skills in all segments like content creation, Search engine optimization (SEO), advanced social media marketing, web development, paid advertising, and so on.
